PROBLEMATIZING POPULATION: POLITICS OF BIRTH CONTROL AND EUGENICS IN INTERWAR JAPAN A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Sujin Lee August 2017 © 2017 Sujin Lee PROBLEMATIZING POPULATION: POLITICS OF BIRTH CONTROL AND EUGENICS IN INTERWAR JAPAN Sujin Lee, Ph. D. Cornell University 2017 This dissertation aims to answer comprehensively the simple, yet significant question of why and how population became a political problem in interwar Japan (late 1910s - late 1930s). During Japan’s interwar years, there was a growing call among social scientists, social reformers, and government elites to solve “population problem (jinkō mondai).” These Japanese intellectuals attributed the population problem in Mainland Japan (naichi) to a wide array of social ills including poverty, unemployment, and physical, mental, and moral degeneration, and considered various solutions to reform the Japanese population. The prevalence of this population discourse must be understood as an obvious symptom of the growing attention among contemporary Japanese intellectuals and bureaucrats to the population: the size and quality of the population became an object of knowledge and an objective of government. Moreover, the ambiguous, yet productive category of the Japanese population provides a revealing look at the complex social relations and colonial mobility in the Japanese Empire. This dissertation focuses on modern governmentality and imperialism that were embedded in the interwar discourse of the population problem. Using Michel Foucault’s conceptualization of discourse, I consider the population discourse to encompass different, or even conflicting agendas, languages, and movements that shaped and reshaped the population problem. The close reading of the arguments of different population discourses, including Neo-Malthusianism, the proletarian birth control and eugenics movement, feminist advocacy for voluntary motherhood, and the government's investigation into population problems, reveals the distinctive nature of Japan's interwar period in two senses: 1) a dynamic space where various discourses on population issues—particularly, birth control, eugenics, and population policy— continuously interwove sexual and biological issues with politico-economic ones; and 2) a crucial stage for reconstructing Japanese modernity through integrating scientific progressivism, social reformism, and imperial nationalism. In sum, in revisiting interwar Japan through the frames of governmentality and imperialism, my dissertation illuminates how the multiple discourses on population constituted and categorized desirable bodies to reproduce, and how these discourses intersected with modern subjectivities—namely, gender, nation, and class. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, Sujin Lee attended Yonsei University in Seoul where she majored in History with a minor in Japanese Studies. After graduating with her BA in 2007, Lee entered a master’s program at Yonsei University and received an MA in Japanese History in 2010. To deepen and broaden her understanding of modern Japanese history, Lee joined the graduate program in History at Cornell University in 2011 and received her PhD in August 2017. She is excited to begin her Postdoctoral Fellowship in the UCLA Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies from September 2017. iii This dissertation is dedicated to my beloved family. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am writing this acknowledgment for my dissertation on the Cornell campus where I spent most of my days during the past six years. I still remember the first day I arrived in Ithaca back in August 2011. As an international student who had no experience studying in the United States until then, I felt excited and anxious at the same time about the new academic journey I was about to embark on within one month. Towards the end of that journey, my initial feelings of excitement and anxiety gradually turned into a sense of familiarity, the wisdom to manage stress and fatigue, and the feeling of pleasant anticipation about the next academic destination. This dissertation is the culmination of the six-year fascinating intellectual journey that began on this very campus. Luckily enough, I had many wonderful travelling companions on the path to this dissertation. I am deeply indebted to my advisor, Professor Naoki Sakai, for his fundamental role in my doctoral work. It has been my honor and privilege to have Professor Sakai as my advisor, whom I had admired for his academic contributions and insightful writings for a long time. After meeting him in person, attending his classes, and having many interesting conversations with him at Cornell, I came to admire him even more. Professor Sakai was a source of inspiration and critical thinking for me, and he spared no efforts to provide me with valuable advice, feedback, and encouragement over the course of my dissertation writing. Professor J. Victor Koschmann offered his detailed guidance and gracious words of encouragement whenever I took the initial step to write an academic paper including my first essay at Cornell, the A-exam essay, and later my dissertation chapters. I am incredibly grateful for him for teaching me how to integrate microscopic historical details with a macroscopic view of a certain society. v Professor Suman Seth introduced me to the world of Science and Technology Studies (STS), which led me to bring theoretical and transnational angles into my analysis of modern Japanese history. Professor Katsuya Hirano played an influential role in making this dissertation project take shape and keeping it in the right direction. I sincerely appreciate his inspiring, thoughtful, and enthusiastic feedbacks on my dissertation research. Beyond my dissertation committee, I owe a debt of gratitude to many faculty members, visiting scholars, and graduate students at Cornell University. Professors Brett De Bary, T.J. Hinrichs, Eric Tagliacozzo and Pedro Erber kindly provided both academic and emotional support during my doctoral program. Professor Kristin Roebuck, who recently joined the Department of History at Cornell, gave thoughtful and detailed comments on the fifth chapter of my dissertation. Cornell became a platform to communicate with visiting professors including Hirotaka Kasai, Jin Han Park, and Eun-shil Kim, who invariably provided intellectual stimulation and encouragement. I am also deeply indebted to my colleagues in the Department of History, Asian Studies, and STS. Particularly, I benefited from the dissertation writing group I organized with Shiau-Yun Chen, Ai Baba, and Shoan Yin Cheung. Their valuable comments and questions helped me elaborate further my arguments and motivated me to continue working toward the finish line. Soo Kyeong Hong, Junliang Huang, Akiko Ishii, Noriaki Hoshino, Taomo Zhou, Xiangjing Chen, Jack Chia, Fritz Bartel, Brian Rutledge, Joseph Giacomelli, Matthew Reeder, Tim Sorg, Jacob Krell, Max McComb, Mate Rigo, Mark Deets, Clarence I-Zhuen Lee, Nari Yoon, Keiji Kunigami, Andrew Harding, Shu-mei Lin, Tinakrit Sireerat, Andrea Mendoza, Kun Huang, Yiyun Peng, Jongsik Yi, and Jihyun Han were all inspiring colleagues as well as supportive friends. Yuna Won was also a reliable friend who taught me the importance of social participation. I would like to express my special thanks to Marcie vi Middlebrooks, Chris Ahn, and Tyran Grillo who helped me enormously in revising and editing my dissertation. The completion of this dissertation was also made possible by a lavish research grant from the Japan Foundation dissertation fellowship. I am grateful to the Japan Foundation for financing nearly one year of research at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. At Doshisha, I was very fortunate to have invaluable opportunities to attend graduate seminars and present my ongoing dissertation project. I deeply thank Professor Ichirō Tomiyama for his warm-hearted invitation to the joy of academic discussion. Several faculty members, visiting scholars, and graduate students whom I met in Kyoto including Yujin Jeong, Young Jin Ko, Inhye Kang, Kazuki Nishikawa, Setsuko Kiriyama, Asato Yoko, and Yea-Yl Yoon. I also benefited from the expertise of scholars Tomoko Tanaka and Akinori Odagiri in conducting in-depth research about Senji Yamamoto and his involvement in the birth control movement in interwar Japan. Various fellowships, conferences, and dissertation awards were another crucial source of motivation and self-confidence. Robert J. Smith Fellowship, Einaudi Center International Research Travel Grant, Sage Fellowship, and Graduate Student Travel Grants funded by the Society for the Humanities all provided generous financial support for my short-term archive research in Japan and South Korea, and enabled me to concentrate all my efforts on the completion of this dissertation. Various conferences and workshops also have offered me the precious opportunities to present different chapters of my dissertation to a wider audience. I am particularly grateful to Takeshi Arimoto, John DiMoia, Ruth Cowan, Jin-kyung Park, Sonja M Kim, Michael Shi-Yung Liu, Aya Homei, Jia-Chen Fu, and Tatsushi Fujiwara, for their critical questions and insightful comments. I was deeply honored to receive the 2016 Taniguchi Medal Award and the 2016 Graduate Student Best Paper Prize, which gave vii me the confidence to pursue my dissertation project. I greatly appreciate the recognition from the Asian Society